Henslow, professor of botany at Cambridge, was Darwin's mentor. He greatly developed Darwin's knowledge of natural history in his student years. Darwin said Henslow "influenced my whole career more than any other." From 1829 to 1831 Darwin constantly used Henslow's Catalogue of British Plants, which was based on his "collations" or comparative collections of plant specimens.

Arum maculatum is a common woodland plant species, widespread across temperate northern Europe. It is known by an abundance of common names including Wild arum, Lords and Ladies, Jack in the Pulpit, Devils and Angels, Cows and Bulls, Cuckoo-Pint, Adam and Eve, Bobbins, Naked Boys, Starch-Root and Wake Robin.

Plate with "Brown Water Lily" pattern, from a dinner service designed and manufactured by Wedgwood & Byerley at Etruria, Staffordshire, ca.1807.

Both Darwin and his wife Emma were grandchildren of the potter Josiah Wedgwood and they inherited various products from the family firm. This plate comes from a dinner service that was ordered by Charles's parents Robert and Susannah Darwin in 1807, and which is thought to have influenced the young Darwin.

It was the first Wedgwood pattern to be taken from an identifiable flower print, one of the beautiful plates of rare exotica in Curtis's Botanical Magazine. The keen scientific interest in plants was another family legacy, in this case from Charles's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin.

Duria Antiquior by Robert Farren (1832-1910)

Here is a scene of prehistory inspired by the new research in geology and paleontology going on at the time, in which Darwin himself was immersed. As scientists became convinced that the earth was far older than the Bible suggested, artists such as Farren responded with imaginative visions. This oil-on-canvas painting is an example of how artists began to re-focus their attention in the light of revelatory scientific discoveries

This dramatic scene is a copy of a design by English geologist Henry de la Beche. Farren probably made this large painting as a teaching aid. The imaginative reconstruction of the prehistoric earth, with dinosaurs and other ancient creatures, was based on the latest fossil finds from Lyme Regis in Dorset. A fierce, crocodile-like ichthyosaur grips a plesiosaur with its razor-sharp teeth, while another plesiosaur in turn snatches at a pterodactyl.

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Morning by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873)

This brutal, melancholy oil-on-canvas painting of epic scenes between stags in the Scottish Highlands is one that Darwin knew, and most likely played into his own vision of life in the wild. Darwin even referred to a book on deer-stalking illustrated by Landseer.

The stags in this picture were described in verse as "mighty heroes of the mountainside." They symbolised the competitive struggle not only between animals but between humans, and its often tragic outcomes. Both lie dead, their antlers fatally entangled. The brightness of the day and the approaching scavengers - a fox and an eagle -typify the heartlessness of nature.

Mammoth Hunters by Ernest Griset (1844-1907)

A well-known illustrator, Ernest Griset was commissioned by Darwin's friend Sir John Lubbock to make a series of large watercolors depicting the life of primitive man.

They reflect the views expressed by Lubbock in his book Pre-historic Times (1865), which in turn were indebted to Darwin's evolutionary notions. Humans had gradually developed from an animal state, and people of the Stone Age, Lubbock believed, had known nothing but hardship, struggle, and danger.

Here they hunt a huge mammoth and scatter as the stricken animal approaches.

"The misshapen polyp floated on the shores, a sort of smiling and hideous Cyclops," by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Darwin's theory of human evolution from an ape-like ancestor was a controversial one, and many artists such as Redon explored it - often in dark and fantastic ways.

This is one of a series of nine lithographs under the collective title "Les Origines" that Redon made a year after Darwin's death. The title clearly evokes Darwin's On The Origin of Species, and a number of the plates suggest a link to specific aspects of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

However, Redon's extraordinary vision of human origins synthesises other influences, too, including the competing evolutionary theories of Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, his reading of popular journals, visits to the Museum de l'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and even the poetry of Jules Michelet and Victor Hugo.

Had the human mind, as well as the body, evolved from those of animals? Do we share emotions such as love, anger and sadness, and even the "finer feelings" with them?

A photograph of this oil-on-canvas painting, one of the most anthropomorphic and lighthearted of Landseer's compositions, was found among Darwin's collection of images relating to his Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, a startling discovery.

Correspondence with Irish artist Briton Riviere made it clear that Darwin seriously considered using the head of Landseer's "Alexander" as a model for the expression of an aggressive dog. This was despite the fact that its knitted brow is completely unnatural for a dog.

For whatever reason, Landseer's image was not used in the end. Nevertheless, the episode reveals a fascinating link between popular notions of animal psychology and Darwin's conviction that human mentality stemmed from that of animal ancestors.

Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds by Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904)

This oil painting highlights Darwin's notions of beauty in nature, in particular courtship display among animals.

Heade was a self-confessed "monomaniac" about hummingbirds and painted these tiny, brilliantly-coloured birds from the 1860s until his death.

He made three trips to Central and South America between 1863 and 1870, and took considerable pride in the fact that his specimens - unlike his rival John Gould's - were drawn directly from nature.

In this imaginary scene, Heade brings together species from different regions in Central and South America. The upper two birds have been identified as male and female amethyst woodstars, a Brazilian species, and the other as a male red-tailed comet, found in Ecuador and Columbia but not Brazil.

The orchid, Cattleya labiata, is a native of Brazil and one of the most popular early introductions in Europe, named in honor of William Cattley of Barnet, in North London.

Suggestive Study, Paradise by John William Inchbold (1830-1888)

This watercolour-over-graphite painting also highlights Darwin's notions of beauty in nature - and again birds feature heavily. Darwin believed that the "most aesthetic" creatures after man were birds. It illuminates the parallels that Darwin drew between the display of beautiful, sexually alluring features by birds and by man (or more commonly, woman).

Female mate choice was one of the most controversial and disturbing aspects of Darwin's theory of sexual selection. Despite his own conventional views on the position of women in society, Darwin is thought to have contributed to the emergence of a dangerously liberated "new woman".

From the mid-nineteenth century, bird of paradise feathers - and sometimes whole birds - were used as trimmings in fashion accessories, especially millinery. Alfred Russel Wallace, who was one of the first Europeans to see birds of paradise displaying in the wild, noted that the minor (or lesser) birds of paradise were especially prone to be hunted for their ornamental tail feathers. Here Inchbold suggests that it is precisely the tail feathers of this bird that will soon adorn the young woman's flowing blond hair.

(Image: Tate, London. Purchased as part of the Oppe Collection, with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund)

Head of a Criminal, Emile Abadie by Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Darwin's theories had a major impact on some of the greatest artists of the 19th century. His book the Expression of Emotions in Man and Animal was widely read in artistic circles in France almost immediately after it was published in 1874, including by the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas.

Over the following decade, Degas began to explore its implications in a series of works representing criminals, ballet dancers and cabaret songsters. In 1879, he became fascinated by a lurid murder trial then causing a sensation in Paris, and obtained privileged access to the courtroom, where he made a number of drawings of the three suspects.

As he worked from his initial sketches to this more finished pastel, Degas increasingly emphasised the brutal and animalistic aspects of Abadie's facial features. Influenced by evolutionary debate, including related ideas of degeneration, commentators on the trial immediately associated the guilty man's low forehead, pronounced jaw, and "animal snout" with a lower form of humanity that included criminals.

Rocks at Port-Coton by Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Monet was another great artist who was influenced by Darwin. His landscapes and seascapes show how, in the 1880s, he searched out the primeval qualities of nature in geological formations that had been shaped by erosion and volcanic activity over many centuries.

Monet first visited the so-called wild coast of Brittany in the autumn of 1886. From the outset, he felt the primeval quality of the landscape, telling a friend that it gave the impression of "the world's dawn, time abandoned... the torment of planetary dramas."

In this painting, he attempted to express the "sinister, tragic" quality of the hard volcanic rock using a palette that is earthy and rich, like seams of minerals deep in the rocks.